Queen of Hearts
by icecreamlova
Summary: For the first time she can remember, Hinata is not afraid. During "Confession", Hinata comes to some very important realizations. Hints of NarutoHinata


_**Edited September 24, 2010. **__Spoilers for the Pain Invasion. Though I doubt there's anyone who doesn't know about what happened here._

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Queen of Hearts  
**By icecreamlova

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Her most vivid memory was of the fear. It was all she could use to define her existence.

More than love, more than hate, more than pain, or loneliness, or joy, or tears, fear was there.

Every stutter even when no words were uttered.

('_G-good luck, Naruto-kun.'_)

She could have opened her mouth and let breath out. It would have been such a simple thing, forming mere words of encouragement, to help the one who had helped her.

Her lips remained firmly shut.

Every fight where she nearly fainted with fright.

(_"__So you're not going to withdraw? Then I won't be responsible for what happens here."_)

She could have remembered her legacy, or the parts that she took pride in, anyway. It should have been easy to summon up the demeanor her father had tried so hard to drum in.

Her head remained firmly lowered.

Every proverb she came to learn as the truth.

("_Because that's what I think . . . true strength really is."_)

She could have taken pride in speaking to him to show she was sincere.

She hid behind a post after forcing the words out.

The fear rolled over her like darkness. Her memories could never escape it. SHE could never escape it.

Except, sometimes, there was a light in that gloom, when her heart was pounding, when the world was shaking. When her palms were sweaty and she could barely keep breathing. Those times.

(_"Come on, Hinata-chan! Show him what you really can do!"_)

It was like she had been trapped in a dark room, only to find that the door wasn't locked at all, and that her searching had led her to the unseen entrance. It would only take one more step to see daylight outside.

(_"The person lost and suffering within the Main and Branch Houses is you, Neji-niisan."_)

Just one step.

It sounded so simple, but there is always something underneath the underneath, and for a long time, she couldn't.

She spent three years improving.

She passed the examinations her second time around, winning three matches – more than enough to showcase her gifts – even though she was knocked out by the fourth.

She studied the basics of healing, and acted as her team's medic, until scrapes and scars disappeared under her hands with mere thoughts.

She trained her byakugan to see for miles in a direction, through trees and through walls, until she could focus on a man's hand as ink sprawled into characters under his pen, and steal secrets.

She learned that fear was irrational, and just wouldn't leave.

Maybe she would have become used to that, given time; even comfortable. Maybe the emotion could have been relegated to the back of her mind, unnoticed. Maybe Hinata would learn to adapt.

But then the world shifted without telling her, that period of grace over, and it wasn't enough any longer.

Hinata had never known the reasons for her light in darkness. She could make reasonable guesses about the people and events that made her feel less alone, but certainty, like the cure for her terror, seemed to lie somewhere beyond her reach. Her reasons gathered dust in their unreasonable hiding place.

She only knew the when, not the why, or the how.

Hinata recognized the _when_ as _now_.

It wasn't a moment of enlightenment. She ought to be the queen of her own heart, able to comprehend at a glance, and find order with a thought, but she wasn't. Hinata rather thought it could be a set of things put together.

The moment was made of all the things she had not said.

('_G-good luck, Naruto-kun.'_)

The moment was made of all the things he HAD said.

(_"Come on, Hinata-chan! Show him what you really can do!"_)

The moment was made of all the truths she had not understood until then.

("_Because that's what I think . . . true strength really is."_)

An epiphany could wait until later, when all her anger and pain, belief and faith, protectiveness and LOVE had stopped intermingling. She let the mixture push her fear – the sort of fear that made her stumble and weep – somewhere she couldn't feel it any longer. He was too important for that.

All right, maybe he was allowed to have the epiphany instead of her.

"So I'm not afraid to die protecting you! Because I - love you..."

It was strange, how ironic life could be. Staring down the most powerful shinobi she had met, to protect the strongest person she had ever known, she was keenly aware of the danger, but she didn't care.

For the first time she could remember, Hinata was not afraid.

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**END**

_R & R, please_

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A/N: This is long due. I had this idea when the chapter first came out, but for various reasons kept putting it off (or rewriting it) in order to get the right tone.

My Naruto/Hinata fan went to heaven in this moment. AND it converted one of my friends, so how could I not write it?


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